Making Scents Of Men

Ann: What’d you do today?

Pam: Besides the usual you mean? I went to the mall and I popped into the candle shop. I was looking for that candle with the shore breeze scent you love so much but they were out until next summer. The fall scents are in already. They have pumpkin spice candles now.

Ann: I can’t walk past a candle shop. I just have to go in and smell all the new scents for the season.

Pam: I can top that. I have to go in every candle shop I see and I can’t leave without buying something. Usually it’s just a little votive or something.

Ann: I think there’s actually a law in this state. Statute number ABC123: ‘All residents within sniffing range are required to enter the premises of any legally operated candle shop and conduct no less than one transaction with said company’.

Pam: You’ve got it almost right. You should have said ‘all female residents’. If you look around in those places you’d think men are actually legally banned from candle shops.

Ann: Except at Christmas.

Pam: Right…when they’re given special dispensation. Why do you think men don’t like to go into candle shops?

Ann: Because candles are feminine. Men don’t want to be seen in there or in lingerie shops unless it’s within two days of Christmas or Valentines.

Pam: I guess they’re worried people will think they’re buying something for themselves, like they’re kinky.

Ann: What? Like wives and girlfriends don’t have birthdays and anniversaries all year long?

Pam: We could make a killing renting t-shirts to men right outside candle shops and lingerie stores. They could say on front and back, ‘Tomorrow’s my wife’s birthday. I swear!’

Ann: And bath and body soap stores too.

Pam: I read in the paper the other day that a man was so embarrassed to buy his wife the birthday gift she asked for that he shoplifted it. He got caught and had to do jail time but he said it was worth it not to have to go through the checkout with that thing.

Ann: Wow! What was it?

Pam: The 20th Anniversary Collection DVD of the Oprah Winfrey show.

Ann: That’s not so bad. I thought you were going to say something like a garden gnome or a dust ruffle. At least he could buy the DVD collection at the electronics store.

Pam: Most guys don’t even know what a dust ruffle is, much less where to buy one.

Ann: Women buy guy stuff all the time…jock straps, men’s deodorant, that kind of thing. We don’t worry that people will think it’s for us.

Pam: I guess it has to do with the bravado thing. They just don’t want to be seen with anything ‘girly’. I remember when Ross was a little boy and he and Bret and I were in the mall together. I handed Bret my purse to free up my hands and overheard him teaching Ross the proper way for a man to hold a woman’s purse.

Ann: There’s a right way for a man to hold a woman’s purse?

Pam: Yeah, he told Ross never, ever hold it by the handle…tuck it under one elbow “like a running back holds a football”.

Ann: That’s silly. What difference could it make how he holds it?

Pam: I guess holding it that way is the international symbol between men that says, ‘Back off. No wisecracks! I’m holding my wife or girlfriend’s purse.”

Ann: I wonder if Ross even remembers Bret teaching him how to hold a purse.

Pam: Oh absolutely! Just this Sunday I intentionally locked my purse in the car during church. When we came out, the kids were having a bake sale so I sent Ross to the car to get it for me while I selected some brownies. When I saw him coming back across the parking lot with it, there he was with my purse tucked under his arm like a football.

Ann: You’re just lucky he didn’t see one of his buddies headed his way. Ross just may have given your purse a heaving spiral pass into the bushes.

Pam: Talk about a Hail Mary pass!